


Orange and Grapefruit

by masked



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Creature Castiel, Harpy Human Hybrid Castiel, Light-Hearted, M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 09:51:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11377743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masked/pseuds/masked
Summary: This is a story about the everyday lives of Dean and Castiel as normal roommates throughout their college years, except Castiel is a hybrid between a human and a phoenix harpy.Yup.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters are not in chronological order. 
> 
> This verse has a tag on my tumblr, which is [orange and grapefruit verse](http://hamburgergod.tumblr.com/tagged/orange%20and%20grapefruit%20verse). It's got the same stuff as this fic does though, so I don't really know why I'm mentioning it. Maybe it'll be useful for someone.

“Hey,” Dean says, poking his head out from around the corner, “I’m making hot chocolate. Want some?”

Cas freezes on the couch like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing, which is weird considering he’s just watching  _Say Yes to the Dress_. “Uh. No.”

A nagging suspicion along with sinking dread that follows has Dean narrowing his eyes. “You… stay right there,” he says with a jab of a finger towards Cas’s way.

He feels Cas’s eyes follow him as he disappears into the kitchen and into the cupboard where their can of hot chocolate mix is. Where their  _full_ can of hot chocolate mixis.

Dean opens the brown can neatly sitting inside the cupboard. Empty, just as suspected.

He swears he can almost taste Cas’s name at the tip of his tongue just before he hears footsteps escaping the living room.

“Cas!” Dean bellows, and runs after him too late, the room door almost slamming against his face. “Dude, this is like violating every single roommate code that’s ever existed,  _ever_.”

“Don’t be angry,” Cas’s muffled voice replies from beyond the door.

Dean sighs towards the ceiling, and tries the doorknob. No use. “At least come to the store with me.”

Silence meets him, and Dean rattles on the doorknob since that usually annoys the hell out of Cas. “C’mon, you selfish prickly asshole! You can’t drink all the hot chocolate and not tell me  _and_  expect me to go to the store by myself _._ ”

“But it’s cold out,” Cas whines.

“Yeah,  _tough_.” Dean rattles the doorknob one last time. “I have an exam tomorrow, so be quick.”

This gets Cas going, shrugging on a coat with a pout as he walks out of his room, and tugs on his mittens that Sam had gotten him last Christmas. And, well, the exam’s not exactly a lie—but Cas doesn’t need to know that Dean’s been studying his ass off for the past few weeks, and that he’s more or less ready for the next wave of exams coming up starting tomorrow.

The wait for the bus is the worst—Dean admits that even as a full human he’s dreading the cold as the wind pierces through their layers of clothes, not cold enough for all the precipitation to be snow but cold enough that there’s a bit of snow in the mix. Cas looks like he’s about to give up on his personal learning-about-humanity mission of his if it means not having to stand in the freezing rain-snow for ten minutes. With Cas’s naturally higher body temperature, Dean swears he sees few water droplets sizzle off of his face. He thinks maybe Cas should get a scarf, to cover up his bare cheeks against the cold.

He’s thinking about which colour would suit Cas best when they arrive at the store. Dean would rather go straight to the hot chocolate aisle, but Cas’s face light up as soon as they walk into the store. Go figures; this place is like a field trip for him.

Dean tugs at Cas’s coat, but it’s too late. Cas wanders to the nearest produce display, and walks along the display with intent, like he’s at a museum exhibition or something. Cas’s learned a lot since his first year living with Dean, but sometimes, especially times like this, is when Dean is most reminded that his roommate isn’t as human as he appears to be. Well, genetically speaking anyway, that he lives with a half-human, half-phoenix breed harpy person. A Half, Cas called himself the first time when Dean found out, said that it was one of the generic terms for ‘things like him’, but, well, Dean thinks Cas is just as much a human as much as he’s the phoenix breed harpy thing. Cas is Cas. Nothing more to it, really.

Dean leaves him to it, and grabs the hot chocolate mix. Cas is by the vegetables by the time Dean is back, a small smile on his face from watching the water spraying thing the vegetable section does.

“Artificial rain for your vegetables,” Cas says with a chuckle. “It never gets old.”

They pay for their stuff, and Cas stands a little closer to Dean at the bus stop when he notices him shivering, their sides touching. “I’ll keep you warm,” Cas says, and Dean feels warm for a completely different reason.

A nice simple black one, maybe, to go with Cas’s hair and feather colour (which Dean gets an eyeful of every once in a while). It’d suit him too, he thinks. Yeah. A nice slick black one, with none of that tassel crap on the ends.

Cas peers at him. “Dean?”

Cas would probably like anything he gives him. Probably. He likes having things that are his own, to really call it  _his_. Cas would probably look good in any scarves, tassel or no.

They almost miss their bus, mostly because Dean is too busy staring at Cas thinking about scarves, and Cas still hasn’t bothered to remember which bus takes them to their stop. Dean gets his cup of hot chocolate, and makes Cas a cup in the end too (despite the fact that Cas didn’t tell him that he finished the last of the hot chocolate mix,  _again_ ). They watch  _Cake Boss_ for a while, and Dean thinks about asking Sam if he thinks a scarf is an okay gift for your roommate. He’ll just say that it’s a really,  _really_  early birthday gift or something.

Cas laughs about something happening on TV, and curls up on the couch snugly. It’s a Wednesday night, but it feels like a weekend somehow. Dean yawns, and dozes off few times until he finds himself blinking awake with his head against Cas’s shoulder.

“Oh,” Cas says quietly, when Dean shifts. “Did I wake you? I didn’t want you to get hot chocolate all over yourself.”

Cas has both of their mugs in his hands. They must’ve made a sound when Cas accidentally clanked them together or something. Cas smells nice, like the earth after it rains, except that makes no sense because nobody smells that way, as far as Dean knows anyway.

“Why the hell’s the window open?” Dean groans into Cas’s shoulder. He feels Cas glance over to their living room window and gives a shrug. “It’s going to get all cold in here.”

Cas is warm, so Dean opts to stay with his head resting against his shoulder, and his arm almost touching Cas’s. He thinks he mumbles something about what sort of scarf Cas would like, and falls back asleep.

Well, there’s no rush figuring that out. It’s not like Cas is going anywhere for a while anyway, not until he’s graduated which won’t be for years (and Dean’s not thinking about what Cas is going to do after that, not now when Dean’s so comfortable snuggled up against him like this).

Yeah.


	2. Chapter 2

They’re just about done with their groceries, and Dean is making sure they got everything they need, when Cas decides to stop in front of a mechanical ghoul doll that says _step here._ One of those things people put on their front lawns for Halloween.

Cas reads the sign, and politely steps onto where it tells him to. The ghoul shrills ominously.

Dean stops him from almost ripping the ghoul’s head off.

“That was entirely unnecessary,” Cas says with a scowl, after Dean calms him down. Dean only doesn’t laugh because Cas is already so angry; he figures if he can see Cas’s wings right now, they’d be all puffed up. “What’s the point of that thing?”

“It’s for Halloween,” he gestures towards the HALLOWEEN section behind them. Cas stares back blankly. “Gonna go on a limb here and assume you don’t know what Halloween is.”

“I know about it. Sort of.” They move up the check-out line. “It’s when the boundaries between realms thin, and humans wear masks to blend in and prevent being killed.”

“Uh, I guess.”

“I’m not really sure where all the chocolate comes into play.”

Dean starts loading up their stuff onto the conveyor belt. Cas helps. “People don’t dress up for that purpose so much anymore, and the chocolate thing—wait,” Dean lowers his voice, “ _do_ the gaps thin during Halloween? Are there alternate realms? Is that actually a thing?”

Cas shrugs. “I don’t know,” he adds helpfully.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

They pay for their stuff, and head back to the bus stop. “So you never did Halloween before.”

“What does ‘doing Halloween’ involve, exactly?”

Dean thinks about all those times mom took him and Sam out for trick-or-treating, going to haunted houses, handing candy out on nights he didn’t feel like going out, carving pumpkins, et cetera. He tells him about the time Sam tripped over his cape when he went as king Arthur one year. “He decided to go as a street magician the year after, and dumbass did the exact same thing with his cape. Don’t think he’s worn one with a cape since.”

Their bus comes then, and they lug their groceries to their seats. “So, yeah,” Dean continues. “It’s mostly going around in costume getting chocolate from your neighbours and carving out pumpkins when you’re a kid.”

Cas thinks this over. “And when you’re not a child?”

“You can hand chocolate out, or it’s mostly going around in costume getting drunk.”

“Hmm.”

When they go to the store together the next week, Dean brings a pack of jack-o-lantern shaped sugar cookies to Cas’s attention.

“I know about these,” Cas replies.

“Yeah?” Dean pops it into their cart, and they move on from the bakery section.

“A man named Jack trapped Satan up on a tree and refused to let him down until he promised to never take his soul—”

“Not today, Satan,” Dean mutters.

“—and Jack won. So when he died and was refused by heaven for his sinful life, Satan gave him a coal burning with hellfire, and Jack carved out a turnip to keep it lit. He wanders with his lantern ever since.”

“Huh. Cool. I think I heard that somewhere. Never knew the details before, though.” Dean eyes the corn, picks one up, and stares at the sign. Hmm, five for one. He beckons Cas towards him. “Let’s get ten of these.”

After making sure Cas checks the corn before he shucks it for the taking, and after halfway through shucking his third corn, Dean puts a finger to it. “Have you been looking stuff up on Halloween?”

“Mostly just Wikipedia,” Cas admits. He puts a feeble-looking corn in the bag, and Dean internally winces. Oh well, he’ll learn one day. “It was still interesting to read about. Did you know that some think trick-or-treating originates from the practice of giving out soul cakes for children and the poor during Halloween and Christmas?”

It’s almost like he’s been waiting to be asked, since Cas goes on and on about all these things about Halloween during their entire way back home, and over dinner. They eat the jack-o-lantern shaped cookies for dessert, and Cas’s smile matches the one on the cookie he holds. He supposes it’ll technically be Cas’s first proper Halloween, so it’d be a shame if Dean’s not a cool roommate who doesn’t care about whether Cas spends his first proper Halloween in a proper Halloween way or not.

Lucky for Cas, Dean is the _coolest_ roommate.

He manages to find the time to stop by the dollar store and scout for deco. None of the blatantly corny looking shit, but still authentic enough that Dean’s willing to put it in their house. It’s not much; just some Halloween stickers that goes on the windows, those pumpkin necklaces that light up he figures they can hang on things, spider webs and little plastic spiders, and one bigger spider doll.

Dean’s wondering if he should start on decorating or if he should wait for Cas, when Cas solves his little conundrum by coming back just then to find Dean sitting in the living room, staring at a set of stickers.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean grins up as Cas takes in the scene.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas slides his bag off. “What is this?”

“Halloween’s close, so I figured, why not?”

Dean swears that Cas _beams_ , and they get started right away. Cas is scarily efficient at it, somehow already knowing exactly where he wants most of the stuff. The lights go on top of the TV, they try to stick the spider webs on the corners of the wall with tape and fail spectacularly so it goes anywhere they can drape them on their furniture, and the spider doll goes on the top of the fridge.

“So it can look down on its prey,” Cas explains.

“And we’re the prey?”

“We’re the prey,” Cas nods seriously.

They do argue a little over the stickers, mainly in that Cas can’t decide on where to put them on.

“Cas, anywhere on the windows is fine,” Dean says for the hundredth time.

“Dean, you don’t understand.” Cas clutches at the sheet of stickers. “This is a huge responsibility.”

The stickers—a bat, a jack-o-lantern, and a ghost—end up on the corner of their living room window by the balcony door.

“Lookin’ good,” Dean grins, and Cas smiles with him.

“Thank you, Dean.”

It’s weird; every time Dean walks into the living room, he remembers the decorations and admires it for few seconds. It’s not like there’s much of it, and it’s not really that big of a deal, but he’s never done stuff like this with his roommates last year.

Sort of weird how Dean knew for sure that his gesture wouldn’t have gone unappreciated, that they’ll always be welcomed. Cas isn’t even wholly human, but how many people in his life can he say that about?

Yeah. Sort of weird.

* * *

Dean’s not able to find the time to set aside to think over a proper, home-made costume this year despite Halloween fast approaching, bombarded with midterms and projects right beforehand (and isn’t _that_ a shame, and he puts aside his real pure panic over growing up real fast). But it’s cool, since he’s going as a generic cowboy, and cowboys are always cool no matter how generic it is.

Halloween is actually on a Saturday this year, which means midterms until the Friday if profs are nice, and midterms on the following Monday if profs are dicks. Thankfully, the former is the case for everyone he knows (except himself, who has a midterm _on_ Saturday, which is bullshit, and molecular bio is _bullshit_ ), which means everyone’s free to party on Halloween.

Dean’s counting on all of these factors when he asks Cas as casually as he can possibly manage, “Hey, so if you don’t have any plans, you wanna come to Charlie’s Halloween party Saturday night?”

It’s good that he waited until after Cas is done pouring hot water into his mug, because he’s staring at him like Dean just asked him to marry him.

“You’re okay with that?” Cas asks, and it’s Dean’s turn to blink.

“I mean, I wouldn’t have asked you if I wasn’t,” Dean jokes, but Cas is putting the kettle down with a serious frown on his face, and Dean feels a heart-to-heart talk coming. Did he do something wrong?

“Uh.” Well, Dean didn’t prepare for this. He mostly expected Cas to be over the moon about getting to do something Halloween-y again. “You can say no if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not human, Dean,” Cas says slowly, like Dean hasn’t known that for the past whole month already. “Your close friends will be there.”

“Yeah,” Dean replies, still kinda clueless about where this is going. “So?”

“So.” Cas hesitates, and shrugs. “It wouldn’t be right.”

Dean blinks rapidly, trying to process this new info, but mostly it’s making the dial-up sound while a lot of question marks fill up his brain. He gives up. “What are you talking about? Is this a harpy thing? Am I stepping boundaries here?”

“No. Well—yes. Mainly in that I’m not completely human.” Cas’s shoulders slump. “This party is important to you. Why would I…”

“Dude, Cas,” Dean says, “it’s just a small party. It’s going to be me and few buddies, and we’ll grab some pizza, watch a cheesy old movie, that sort of deal.” Cas still doesn’t look at him, which isn’t the best sign, and, well, this sort of hesitation is new. “Cas?”

“I’ve never been to a party,” Cas mumbles. “I never had the occasion, and I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“That’s fine!” Dean laughs, though he doesn’t mean to sound rude about it. Cas, however, glares. “Cas, of course you don’t know jack shit about how humans do things. _I_ don’t know how harpies party, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try new things.”

“I don’t really know how harpies party either,” Cas helpfully points out. “Except maybe the occasional family gatherings.”

“Cas. Buddy. Pal.” Dean pats him on the shoulder. “That is _exactly_ why you gotta come! C’mon, what d’you say, huh?”

Cas stares at him, and he huffs at his face (rude). The corner of his lips quirk up slightly. “Alright.”

Dean grins. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Cas replies. “But I don’t have a costume, and I don’t think we have time to find something for me.”

“You can borrow mine,” he says quickly. “I was going to use one of Charlie’s, anyway.” Dean glances at the clock. It’s eight at night, and they still got few hours before some of the costume stores and thrift stores around town to close. Dean _does_ have a midterm tomorrow and he’d be in a bit of a tight spot, but he might just have enough time management skills in him yet to work with whatever time he has left after costume shopping. “Unless you want to try to find something for yourself…?”

“No, that’s fine. We both have a midterm tomorrow, so I’d rather not.” Cas smiles. “You were going as the cowman, right?”

“Cowboy,” Dean corrects, and thumps him on the shoulder few times. “Dude, I’m stoked! I can’t wait ‘til you meet everyone.”

“Me too.” Cas beams, standing there with his cup of coffee in hand, his hair still ruffled from unconsciously running his hands through it while he looked over his notes. Dean wants to reach over and flick at the strands that are standing up. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean nudges. “Study hard, so we can party hard, alright?”

Cas nods, and Dean watches him retreat back into his room. He makes himself a cup of hot chocolate with a little bit of the instant coffee mix they have, and sit back down in front of his desk himself.

Maybe _now_ he’ll be able to focus on studying.

* * *

Dean’s midterms come and go, and he finds out just how much he hates molecular bio all over again, but he’s quick to put that behind him now that he’s free for the weekend.

He has a slight bounce to his steps on his way back, no worries for tomorrow and nothing to do tonight except to hang out with good company and chill. Needless to say that he’s wholly unprepared for the sight that greets him when he steps into his apartment.

“Oh, Dean,” Cas turns around casually. His wings are poking out from underneath the dark brown trench coat, relaxed as Cas stretches his arms to the side. “What do you think?”

What does he think. What does Dean Winchester, trademark Bisexual, think of Cas in jeans with a decorative belt buckle and a (toy) gun strapped to the side, a black vest accessorized with a fake pocket watch, with a red scarf tied around his neck and a dark brown cowboy hat sitting just above his dark brows.

“You look good,” he manages. Should’ve just put Cas in a potato sack instead of, _whatever_ , is what he wants to say. “Dude, damn. I’m impressed.” Maybe too far. “Glad that you’re fit. It. It fits you. Glad that _it_ fits you.”

Cas smiles, which is just about the hardest thing for Dean to endure right now. “I won’t have these out, of course,” he says, his wings fluttering a little. “But this is nice.”

Dean laughs. This was a mistake. “The trench coat is a look I never thought would be for you, but hey, maybe next year, you should be Constantine,” he says, and regrets it immediately. He, Dean Winchester, trademark Bisexual, does not have the strength to see Cas in a Constantine outfit.

Cas cocks his head to the side at the mention of someone he’s never heard of before, and Dean leaves him to looking up who Constantine is while he himself gets ready for the party. He’s excited to find that the knight costume is slightly tighter around his shoulders compared to when they ran the Moondoor campaign over the summer. When he steps out of his room, Cas grins.

“Ready for a taste of Halloween?” Dean smiles, and Cas nods. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”

* * *

Cas meets Charlie, who’s dressed as a Ravenclaw (“Ravenclaw? You are _not_ a Ravenclaw.” “Don’t judge a girl by her house, Dean.”) and has had a lot to say to Dean in private on his choice of costume for Cas (“I just _lent_ him mine, Charlie. Nothing else to it.” “It’d be more convincing if it came from someone who didn’t have the _biggest_ cowboy fetish I’ve ever met.”).

Cas also meets the rest of the nerd club (Jo as a kraken, Ash as goblin king, Victor as Captain America, Jesse as Falcon, and Cesar as Hawkeye), who collectively decide to take turns to bring up one embarrassing thing Dean did during LARPing per person, those sick fuckers. Dean hates that every time there’s someone willing to listen in their nearest vicinity they bring up that one time he fell face-first straight into a puddle, but Cas, surrounded by his friends, steals a glance at Dean and smiles, and the story becomes a hundred times more embarrassing, but, well, it’s alright.

Jesse lets Cas poke at his wings and lift it here and there, letting him inspect it with a smile, and he listens as Cesar explains about the Marvel universe. Cas also listens to Jesse bicker with Victor about how they’re both technically Sam Wilson and how they should’ve discussed this beforehand. Dean can tell that Cas doesn’t understand, and that he’ll have a million questions after this party.  

They play a game of Catan where they don’t miraculously kill each other after, probably because Cas wins. Everybody else calls it a beginner’s luck, but Dean knows better. So doe Charlie apparently, because she tries to scout him into playing for the next time they start a new DnD campaign.

“That sounds fun,” Cas says, glancing at Dean. “Will you be there?”

Dean ignores everyone else’s knowing looks and nods at Cas, because they’re _dumb_ and they don’t know that Cas isn’t some socially inept roommate who’s overly attached to Dean but an actually different species altogether, and that he’s still somewhat hesitant when it comes to joining the rest of humanity, so he needs at least one human he knows to be there for emotional support. Understandably.

After, they all cram into Charlie’s two couches with a box of pizza and a bowl of chocolate bars in front of them, and argue on whether to watch _The Haunting_ or _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ , and Dean wins with the latter by using the Cas-has-never-watched-it-and-it’s-a-classic-Halloween-movie-so-it’d-be-a-tragedy-if-he-didn’t card.

“It’s more fun at a showing with more people,” Dean says as Charlie hands out the bells, “but these kids are all nerds so you’re probably okay.”

Dean gets a shower of popcorn for that, which is totally unfair, because they all prove his points by throwing rice like confetti and yelling at the top of their lungs on their cues. Cas is bewildered, but he shakes his bell and does the Time Dance even though he has no idea what the hell he’s doing or why, and he laughs while they hop around in Charlie’s living room, and throwing toast and toilet paper in the air. Ash knocks over the pizza box, and he’s banned from standing on the table after that.

After that’s the clean-up, and then back home. Charlie seriously invites Cas to come to their nerd club the next time he’s around, and he thanks her for the invite. Dean watches the exchange as Charlie hugs Cas, and he tears up a little, but that’s really dumb so he’s going to pretend it didn’t happen.

“So,” Dean prompts on their way back, both of them stuffed full of pizza and popcorn and chocolate, “how was it? Your first human party?”

Cas forgot his cowboy hat back at Charlie’s place, and he’s loosened the red scarf around his neck a long time ago. He has it tied onto his belt where he rests one of his hand as they walk back. “It was… enjoyable,” he replies with a nod.

“Ah, don’t be like that. You had _so_ much fun.”

Cas grins. “I did. They all care greatly about you.”

“What?” Dean laughs. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“They tried to make me feel welcome, for you.”

“I _guess_. They wouldn’t have done that if you were a dick, though.”

Cas laughs, ducking his head a little as the sound echoes low into the night sky. “I guess.”

“Wait, hold on.” There’s a grain of rice stuck on Cas’s hair. “You’ve got a—”

They stop in the middle of the street, and Dean holds his shoulder steadily while he aims for the white grain. Cas’s eyes go together as he looks up at Dean’s hand on his head, and Dean makes the mistake of looking down at Cas while he’s holding him by his shoulder.

There weren’t any alcohol at Charlie’s, but Dean feels like he’s drunk on something, the way his entire body feels light and somehow removed from the rest of the world. It’s a physical feeling, too, a tingle in his chest as he’s suddenly too aware of how empty the rest of the street is, and how easy it would be to just lean over right now and give Cas a kiss.

It’s a fleeting thought, and then it’s gone, as if it hadn’t existed at all. His heart beats steadily as Dean gets out the rest of the grains of rice that was hiding in Cas’s hair. “Did they all pelt their rice at you or something? Why d’you have so much in here?”

Cas chuckles quietly, vibrating with joy as rice falls out of his hair. It’s a sight, alright, and damn does it feel good to make someone happy like this.

“So what was this Marvel Cesar was talking about?” Cas asks.

“Marvel, _pff_. Wait ‘til you hear about Batman and the rest of DC, dude.”

They walk the rest of the way back, mostly with Dean filling Cas in on everything he knows about Marvel and DC. It’s almost two by the time they’re home, and Halloween is officially over as they retire to their rooms. Dean is changing into his pajamas trying not to think too much about how he did on his midterms when there’s a knock on the door.

Cas pokes out from behind the door, changed out of the costume he’s now holding in his hands. “I just wanted to return this, and thank you for inviting me along,” he says. “So, thank you.”

“Hey, no problem. I had fun.” Dean gives him a good tap on the shoulder. “Besides, that’s what friends are for, right?”

Cas smiles with a nod. “Good night, Dean.”

“Night, Cas.”

Dean stares at the door as it clicks shut. He’s gotten few texts in the group chat on how he should bring Cas for the next club event. He rolls over in his bed.

A good Halloween overall.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warning** : brief mention to alcohol drinking during this one

Dean comes back from his last class for the day, and pauses at the foyer when he smells the unmistakably fruity sweet smell that fills the entire house. Also mixed in the air is the tangy scent of alcohol.

“Cas?” Dean calls carefully, because he knows by now to assume it always involves Cas whenever unexpected shit happens around here. He hopes Cas is actually around, and this isn’t another one of his relatives. Anna he can stand, everyone else related to Cas, he’d rather not.

Thankfully, Cas’s voice calls back from the kitchen. Not very thankfully, Dean hears another voice murmuring alongside Cas’s.

“What’s that smell?” Dean asks, and walks into—

—Cas arguing with a short, blonde guy. “—don’t need all this,” Cas continues, gesturing at the bottles and bottles of deep red liquid that now fills up the entire kitchen counter space. Cas glances at Dean, and sets his eyes firmly back on the man standing in front of him.

The man—the harpy, probably—sighs with a shrug. “Can’t believe I’m being treated like this,” he says woefully. “I traveled thousands of miles lugging these heavy things to share some of my best brew with you, and yet—”

“Balthazar, please,” Cas replies sharply, and Dean raises an eyebrow at the name. Definitely another relative, then. “I appreciate your thought, but I don’t—”

“Drink harpy stuff? Oh, come off of it, Cassie. You drank this stuff before,” Balthazar says flippantly, and the way Cas squares his shoulders at the comment immediately has Dean disliking Balthazar. 

“Not anymore,” Cas replies dryly. 

There’s an uncomfortable tension in the air now, and one that Dean’s obviously not attuned to since he has no idea what the fuck they’re  _actually_ talking about.

“Hi, I’m Dean,” Dean says with a tight smile, and both Cas and Balthazar turn to him with a blink, like they hadn’t expected the human to butt in. Being a distraction aside, Dean half-expected it from this dick, but he didn’t think Cas would be so riled up enough to forget about him completely.

Balthazar narrows his eyes in distaste. Oh good, he’s one of  _those_ cousins. “I know who you are,” he says. It’s amazing how he can say this and have it sound like  _how dare you interrupt us you filthy bug_  instead. 

“Balthazar,” Cas hisses, but Balthazar doesn’t bat an eye.

“Anyway, I just need you to taste it,” Balthazar says with an easy shrug. “Let me know how it is.”

Cas’s jaw clenches like he wants to say something, but his shoulders slump in defeat. “Have a safe flight back.”

True to his words, Cas doesn’t drink any of the stuff. He tells Dean to “go ahead” whenever he wants, as long as Dean criticizes it like Balthazar had wanted. He gives a fair warning to water it down beforehand, since it’ll be too strong for a human. 

He’s not sure what to take from that, gauging from his conversation with Balthazar, and besides, with how dad used to be, Dean’s always been… reluctant to take up drinking as a regular hobby himself. 

So he just… doesn’t open any of them. He’s not sure he trusts Balthazar enough to drink anything he’s made, anyway. When Dean tells Cas this, he laughs and says that if he had to pick one thing to trust Balthazar for, it would be his brewing skills.

Cas still doesn’t drink any of the stuff, though. And it continues to be that way, until it isn’t anymore, on one Saturday evening.

Dean comes home, high in spirit after a LARPing session gone excellent to his favour. He’s pretty sure he and Charlie can take on Jo the next time they meet, once and for all. Which is seriously awesome, because this campaign’s lasted far longer than any of them had expected, and it’s about time they put an end to this long battle.

“’S’up, man,” Dean says to Cas, who’s facing the TV as he surfs the channel.

Cas gives a noncommittal grunt, and sips something out of a mug. Dean wrinkles his nose as he gets a waft of the smell, strong enough to float all the way back to where Dean’s standing. He peeks over, and yep, it’s the same red stuff that’s been on their kitchen counter for weeks. 

“You okay?” Dean asks, sliding his backpack off of his back and settling on the couch across from Cas.

Cas blinks back from the TV, his eyes eerily unfocused even as he stares in Dean’s general direction. He shrugs, and takes another sip.

It’s not really a look Dean likes on him, to be honest.

“Hey now,” Dean gestures at the mug, and Cas glances down.

“You need to water it down more if you want to try it,” Cas replies. “It’s too strong for you.”

“You’re drinking it, though.”

Cas wrinkles his nose. “I’m not human, Dean. Not completely.”

Duh. Dean knows that. He’s just not sure why Cas sounds all barb-wired about it. Sure it’s not headline news that Cas gets offended at unexpected things, but not like… this.

Cas must’ve gone out to buy the half-full can of tonic water in the fridge, because Dean definitely didn’t. He pours a little more into the mug Cas hands over to him, and tries sipping at the drink, grimacing at how strong it still is. He pours the rest of it in there, and tries again. It’s not that bad now; just as sweet as it smells. Strong, too, even with the whole can of tonic water in there. 

They watch TV together for a while; it’s Dr. Phil, something about illegitimate children and family drama crap. Dean doesn’t give the mug back.

Cas bristles in his seat, and Dean thinks he’s about to go get another mug full of the stuff, but he just heads to the washroom. Which is good, since Dean hasn’t thought that far ahead about how else he’s going to keep this stuff away from Cas, if possible.

By the time Dean’s contemplating on whether dumping all those bottles in the kitchen down the drain is crossing a line or not, Cas slumps back into the couch. He doesn’t ask for the mug back, so Dean just takes a helpless sip out of it to have something to do. Dr. Phil’s voice and dramatic music fills the room.

“Can I tell you something?”

Cas has really bright blue eyes. Dean never thought of himself as having a type before, but lately, he’s been developing a slight bias. “Sure.”

“I hate being a Half,” Cas says, his eyes wide.

Dean blinks.

“No, that’s not it,” he continues, fixing his eyes to the wall in front of him. “I don’t care that I’m a Half. At least.. I don’t think I do.”

“Um, okay.”

“But I hate being called a Half. Harpies always refer to themselves as ‘harpies’, you know.” That seems reasonable enough. “Except when they’re talking about…” 

He makes a vague gesture towards himself. Oh. 

“I never get referred to as a harpy. Only a Half. The only exceptions are my closest kin, who don’t think of me as human at all.”

Dean’s not sure what to say to that, probably because he’s only ever been raised as a human. He fumbles around with how to properly respond, but Cas is thankfully not done talking.

“I suppose it’s good that we have the distinction, in a way. I’m not a full harpy. It’s… not who I am, Dean. But I’m not a full human, and that’s not who I am, either.” Cas sinks a little more into the couch. “But they always make Half sound so…”

“Wrong?” Dean offers.

“Yes,” Cas replies quietly. “Like it’s dirty. Like my entire existence is a bane to theirs, as if I chose to exist this way.”

Dean clutches the mug in his hand. He almost wishes these harpies were here with them, if only to give them a piece of his mind.

“It’s almost funny,” Cas says, sounding like the opposite of amused. “They hate me for being part human, but they demand that I keep my being a harpy to myself. Associating myself with the same thing that they are… personally offends them.”

Dean wants to reach over, and just—do something. Anything to will that dejected look away from Cas’s face. He remembers a lecture he had the other day.

“Grapefruits,” Dean blurts.

Cas stops looking miserable for a split second, at least. He stares at Dean with wide eyes, then blinks as he tries to process what was just said, which settles into a confused frown. “What?”

Dean sets the mug down, his face as red as the alcohol. “I learned in genetics the other day, that, um, you know, grapefruits are a cross between oranges and pomelos. So I came home and looked this stuff up, ‘cause I thought, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that, y’know?” he shrugs. “And apparently, back when they first found grapefruits, people couldn’t decide on whether it was more of an orange or a pomelo. They argued all the time about which one grapefruit should be called as, right, and they actually decided that it’s a pomelo, and yeah, it tastes and looks more like a pomelo than an orange, but a grapefruit is  _not_  a pomelo. It’s a, it’s a fucking grapefruit.”

Cas squints at him. “So… I’m the grapefruit.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean continues. “And funny thing is, until they decided to call it pomelo, they mostly referred to grapefruits as the forbidden fruit or some shit. They couldn’t wrap their little heads around the fact that just because grapefruits have qualities from both oranges and pomelos, it couldn’t be anything other than an orange or a pomelo, depending on who you asked at the time. It was only years after being called a pomelo that grapefruit got sorted as its own thing—as a grapefruit. See where I’m coming from? Yeah?” He makes a juggling gesture, and Cas’s frown deepens.

“I sense that you’re trying to make me feel better,” he says, “but I’m not sure how this is supposed to make me feel better.”

Dean bites his lips, and tries again. “Okay, look, what I’m saying is. You’re not an orange or a pomelo. You’re not—a ‘forbidden fruit’ either,” he air-quotes. “You’re a grapefruit. You’re, you know, Castiel. Cas.” Dean bumps Cas’s knees with his own. 

Castiel frowns down at his hands, but looks less confused than before. Good, okay, progress. 

“Okay, uh, oh!” he snaps his fingers. “Easier example. Everyone knows you can make orange by mixing red and yellow together, right? But nobody calls orange a red-wannabe, or a yellow-wannabe. Nobody points at an orange, I don’t know, shirt, and say ‘hey, look at that half-red half-yellow shirt’. It’s just a fucking orange shirt. 

“And yeah, some people might argue that the shirt is more red or more yellow or whatever, and that’s their own damn opinion, fine, but that doesn’t make reddish orange or yellowish orange more orange than the other. And just because some, uh, primary… colour purists say you can’t call orange for what it is, doesn’t mean orange is going to stop being orange. You can still be just… orange,” Dean finishes weakly. He probably should’ve stopped at the grapefruit example.

“So now you’re saying I  _am_  an orange,” Cas replies.

“Not the  _fruit_ , Cas, the—” Dean starts, but stops at the slightly amused smile Cas is wearing. 

Cas huffs, and leans forward. “Grapefruits,” he repeats carefully. Dean nods.

“D’you see what I’m getting at, here?”

“I think so,” he says, and good. That’s good. Better answer than a ‘no’, at least.

Dean reaches over to pat him on the back. “Just, keep being you, Cas,” he offers. The clench in Cas’s jaw has loosened up. “No need to be anything else.”

Cas stares at him with his bright blue eyes and his widened smile. Their knees are still touching from when Dean bumped them together.

There’s a rustle and the sound of cloth ripping, and Dean blinks up from Cas’s face to see wings, and has seconds to respond to Cas’s opening arms and wings by opening his own arms. 

“Hey, hey, alright,” Dean says in what he hopes is a soothing voice against the warmth wrapped around him. Cas’s hair tickles the side of his face.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas mumbles into Dean’s ear. He tries to not shiver, and responds with a tight squeeze before they part. Cas’s feathers sweep at his cheeks and down under his chin as his wings fold back up, almost like they’re caressing his face for a second there. He supposes he can’t help it; not like Dean can control every single strand of his hair.

Cas turns the TV off, and Dean cooks them a late dinner. Cas helps with the dishes after, and Dean heat themselves two cups of hot chocolate to sip at.

The mug of red sits on top of the coffe table, forgotten.  


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's Day special

“You’re Castiel’s mate.”

Dean Winchester regards the woman standing in his living room, and concludes that it’s been a long day. “Roommate,” Dean corrects, slinging his bag off onto the floor.

She frowns at him. “But you live together.”

There’s a question in there somewhere, but Dean doesn’t bother asking it. “And you are?”

She straightens, her fingers twitching. Dean eyes them warily in case of the slightest chance she might break out the talons he’s heard so much about. “Hannah, Castiel’s cousin. I’ve come to ask your intention.”

“My intention,” Dean echoes. “In regards to what, exactly?”

“Castiel, of course.”

“Oh,” Dean smiles back thinly, “of course.”

She looks at him expectantly, and Dean stares back with a blank.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What do you intend to do with Castiel?”

“Wha—Nothing! Look, Hannah, was it? I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I’m just his roommate.”

Hannah’s lips thin. “But you _live_ with him.”

“Yeah, _so_?”

“ _So,_ ” Hannah grits back. “Harpies— _proper_ harpies—don’t live with each other unless they mate for life.”

Dean closes his eyes. He’s gotta stop trying to count backwards from ten to calm his mood every time Cas’s cousins decide to visit, since it ends up sounding like a countdown for some sort of emotional blast off instead.

“Right,” he starts off. “Well, I’m human, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Castiel is half-harpy.”

“ _Yeah,_ and half- _human_. Just ‘cause he follows harpy customs doesn’t mean it extends to me.”

Hannah purses her lips at this, regarding Dean up and down while reassessing her thoughts. Dean remembers that she said she came to ask his intentions. The door to Cas’s room is shut closed, which means he’s not even home. Dean doubts Cas knows she’s here. He has a nagging suspicion she chose a specific time jus to avoid him, anyway.

“How did you get in here anyway?” Dean asks. She glances back at their balcony door, and of course she came through the balcony. Dean really needs to learn to lock that thing before he leaves the house.

“Well,” she says, visibly hesitant to just leave her beloved cousin alone with this monster of a human, “I understand, then. But you better not try to do anything funny.”

Is he honestly getting the Talk from Cas’s family member? It’d be a bit more daunting if it didn’t literally have anything to do with him at all. But, he supposes not all of them are dicks to Cas if she cares about him this much. “You don’t want to see Cas before you go?”

“I got what I came here for,” she replies. “Goodbye, Dean Winchester.”

She then jumps out the balcony, and just watching the act gives his stomach a swoop. He rushes outside to watch her flap her giant wings (even bigger than Cas’s) as she soars through the sky.

Jesus.

When he recounts the whole thing to Cas later that night, Cas’s lips press into a thin line with disapproval.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that,” Cas says, like it’s his fault that he has weird cousins.

“It’s whatever, man. What’d you want for dinner?”

And the rest of the day goes normally, like nothing’s happened at all.

 

* * *

 

Today’s Valentine’s day.

Dean’s brain betrays him and his thoughts immediately jump from that realization to Cas, sitting right across from him and looking ready to burn his textbook to the ground.

Not cool, brain. Not cool.

Actually, he’s surprised that Cas hasn’t mentioned anything about it yet, what with all the fuss he’s made over all the other holidays he’s experienced for the first time since he’s been living with Dean. At least, he’s pretty sure this is Cas’s first Valentine’s day considering that this is his first year living among humans, and all of his firsts have been with Dean.

Okay, that’s a weird way of putting it, so Dean’s never going to think of it like that again.

Anyway, it _has_ been a hectic few weeks what with the first rush of assignments having been due, and midterms fast approaching them. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.   

“Cas?” Dean calls, and Cas mumbles something incomprehensible as a response. “D’you know what day it is today?”

“The fourteenth,” Cas replies, not taking his eyes off of his notes. “I’m never taking another computer course again.”

“It’s not that bad, is it?” Dean’s had to take one before, when he needed an easy science elective. “I _know_ you know how to make fonts bigger in a word doc now.”

Cas has a glare on, not particularly directed at Dean. “None of the _ridiculous_ assignments I’ve had to do so far relate back to the course material at all, and there are so many _names_ for things which I’m sure make no sense to _anyone_ on this planet, human or harpy or otherwise.”

Dean huffs. “I think you need a break.”

“What I need is for my professor to send everyone an apology email.”

Dean’s done his best to not laugh so far, but that one takes the cake. “Alright,” he says, and pulls the textbook away from Cas. Cas closes his eyes with a sigh, and slumps against the chair. “Today’s another holiday, you know.”

“I know,” Cas replies methodically. “Valentine’s day, also called Saint Valentine’s day or Feast of the Saint Valentine.”

Somehow, the fact that Cas somewhat knows about it already makes Dean’s heart thrum louder. “So you… knew about it?”

“I’ve started to realize that humans like to advertise upcoming holidays months in advance,” Cas replies, still in his monotone. He finally opens his eyes, still bleary from the horrors of poorly designed courses. “It’s also very hard to miss all the pink and red things that started to appear right after Christmas.”

“Yeah, stores tend to go overboard with that shit.”

“It’s nice,” Cas continues sincerely. “The enthusiasm is energizing, and the joy in ways humans celebrate different aspects of being alive is infectious.”

“That’s one way to put capitalism.”

Cas shrugs, and runs tired fingers through his hair. His wings are droopy on the floor as he slumps further into the chair. The fact that he can wax all that poetic crap about today is even more of a reason why it’s weird that Cas hasn’t enthused to him about Valentine’s day like he has with all the other holidays.

It shouldn’t be awkward to bring it up, but it definitely feels awkward. “Do you know what Valentine’s is for?” Dean asks.

“it’s a holiday to celebrate love shared between people involved in a romantic relationship,” Cas says, looking straight at Dean. Geez.

“Right, so… you do know.”

“Yes, Google and Wikipedia are always helpful. I’m starting to wonder if it would be more effective for me to just go back home and read Wikipedia articles to learn about humanity instead of spending thousands of human money just to learn these—” Cas sets his glare back to his textbook, “— _lingos_.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

“No, Dean,” Cas replies, and this guy’s eyes are completely dead. Yeah, dude needs a break. “I would never leave, at least until the lease we signed together for this apartment is up.”

“Right.” Dean can suddenly feel his own eyes twitching from stress. Somehow this conversation has taken a turn he was _not_ expecting; he’s about ninety-three percent sure that Cas is joking right now, but suddenly he’s faced with the real possibility that Cas _can_ move out at the end of this semester, and Dean will have to find another roommate who isn’t Cas.

Okay. Well. He’ll think about that later. For now, it gets him wondering, “Have you ever had a date before?”

Cas frowns, like he does when he has no idea where Dean is going with the conversation. “No,” he replies slowly. “Have _you_?”

“Yeah, I guess? I’ve gotten candy-grams during high school and stuff. You know.”

“No, I don’t,” Cas replies coldly. “I just told you that. What do you do with a date, anyway?”

“Uh. Well, depends, I guess. You eat dinner together, make small talks, get to know each other—”

“We do that together every day,” Cas points out.

“That’s—different,” Dean grits. “Uh, what else? Since it’s Valentine’s, people give chocolates to each other—”

Cas raises his eyebrows, stares down at the plate of brownies on the coffee table that Dean’s baked earlier today, and back up at Dean.

“ _Different_.”

“How?” Cas makes a point to snag a brownie off of the plate. “If we’re going by all the criteria you listed on what’s required for a date, we’ve been on a date every day.”

Dean flushes. He knows it’s just Cas not understanding what a date is exactly for, but somehow it weirds him out in a weird way. “Intentions matter,” he explains. “There’s gotta be feelings behind those actions. Like you said, uh, Valentine’s is a celebration of romance. And first dates can end up with a kiss, and—other things.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Dean shrugs. “Sex.”

Cas blinks. “Sex.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell me a date is an act of courtship for marriage.”

Dean blinks. “I mean, I _guess_ going on dates with someone could end up with them married. Usually it’s a casual thing though, to get to know each other better before doing all that—marriage couple crap.”

“But—” Cas frowns into the air. “We still did all those things, save for the kissing and the sex.” The sex. Classic Cas. “Kissing and sex are both actions, and we still acted out on all those other aspects of dating. Does that mean we’re dating under human definition?” Cas frowns down at Dean, like Dean’s somehow tricked him into being his boyfriend. “Are we _dating_ , Dean?” Cas’s wings flutter a little at the tips. “Have you been _courting_ me?”

“Jesus, Cas. No. Calm down.”

Cas’s wings flutter back down.

Dean gathers his hands together, and points all of his fingers at Cas. “Look,” he says, willing patience into existence. “Like I said, intentions matter. Making things official, you know, that sort of deal. Doesn’t us living together prove that?”

Cas blinks, and it clicks. “Oh.”

“Right?” Dean continues. “By harpy standards, we should be getting ready to ring the bells at the altar, but we’re not, are we?” Cas frowns at this in confusion, but Dean waves him aside. “I just mean, we should be well into being engaged for a couple of months according to your cousin if we were going by harpy customs. But we’re not. We’re just roommates.”

“Not that I’m saying otherwise,” Cas interjects, “but if we’re not going by harpy customs, and we’re apparently not going by human customs according to you, then what are we going by?”

Dean shrugs. “Dude, who cares? We say that we’re not in that sort of relationship, end of discussion. Right?”

Cas thinks over this thoughtfully, and nods. “Right.”

“Okay.” Dean eats a brownie with a huff. Geez, who would’ve thought talking about Valentine’s would lead to all this?

Anyway. It’s ridiculous, the idea of dating _Cas_ , of all people. Whoever thinks that probably _definitely_ doesn’t know anything about the dynamic between him and Cas. They’re not like that. They’re friends. They’re roommates. Dean is Cas’s Jiminy Cricket, if he had to put it roughly. Nobody talks about Pinocchio hitting it up with the cricket, though, do they? Same difference, and there’s nothing more or less to it.

Plus, seeing how much it freaked Cas out, he also obviously thinks the very idea is as ridiculous as how ridiculous Dean thinks it is. So. There.

 

* * *

 

Dean wakes up a little freaked out later that night, his hands clutching the sheets while he blinks up at the dark ceiling.

He had a stupid, stupid, _stupid_ dream about kissing Cas.

Not _cool_ , brain.


	5. Chapter 5

The guy had seemed… well, Dean wouldn’t say friendly, exactly, but he had seemed decent enough. I’d-be-down-with-living-with-you-for-the-next-year-or-so decent. He should’ve known the moment he introduced himself as ‘Castiel’ because really, what human parent with a right mind names their kid anything remotely like ‘Castiel’?

Anyway, guy moves in, they awkwardly fumble around each other in the shared spaces for a while, it’s all good. They mostly keep to themselves for the first few weeks, until he finds Cas sitting on the couch and watching some crappy daytime soap opera with intense concentration.

“ _Days of Our Lives_? Really?” Dean asks, plopping down beside Cas, since he figures it’s a polite thing to interact with your roommate at least once during your lease together.

Cas nods. “It’s very… dramatic.”

Dean snorts. “It’s _Days of Our Lives_.”

Cas shoots him a confused look, but doesn’t comment further as they sit together and watch some blonde dude stand around looking anxious. The camera cuts to a dark haired dude in a blue shirt. Dean’s pretty sure they’re a _thing_ or whatever, and huh, he didn’t know _Days of Our Lives_ has a queer couple in it. Good for them.

The blonde dude needs a favour from the dark haired dude. He needs to borrow money from the guy but he can’t tell him why. Okay?

“What the fuck is going on?” Dean asks.

Cas rips his eyes from the TV and admits, “I have no idea.”

“Dude, you’re the one that’s been watching it for the past who knows how long.”

Now some lady is rubbing her stomach while she stares at herself in the mirror, then stares at some dude in her phone contacts. She tells herself that she can’t. It quickly cuts to a man and a woman talking about yet _another_ woman.

“How are any of these people’s stories related to each other?” Dean asks again.

“I’m not really sure,” Cas says. “There are a lot of people.”

Dean laughs, and stays for the rest of the episode.

* * *

So, they get along. Awesome. Most roommates Dean’s had before were pretty cool, but some of them weren’t, and he’s heard horror stories about terrible roommates before, so he’s glad that Cas didn’t turn out to be a complete dickwad.

Dean’s finished up with his last lecture of the day and walking to the bus stops when he spots Cas through the campus cafeteria’s window, staring up at the university café’s menu. He debates whether to catch his attention or not when Cas looks down and spots _him_. Dean manages a little awkward wave before he decides to join him. They’re headed the same way anyway, so no biggie.

They wait for a girl in front of them to stick a straw into one of those iced drinks and walk away while Dean’s making small talks with Cas about his day. Cas gets to his hot chocolate after the girl leaves, and he stick a straw into his own drink.

For a split second, Dean thinks he’s going to stir it or something, but Cas sips out of the straw before he could get a word in. What.

What the fuck.

“What?” Cas answers, and sips at the hot chocolate again. Not even through a stirring stick. Through a straw. He scrunches his face up. “This is very sweet.” Cas frowns, this time probably from the look on Dean’s face. “Did I do something wrong?”

Dean reaches up and touches the side of the cup with his finger. He can feel the warmth seeping through the paper cup. “What the fuck,” he announces. “What are you, a fucking dragon? Jesus.”

Cas frowns again, the straw still between his lips. “No, neither.”

Dean takes a second to try to figure out if that was a joke or not. He decides to address the more pressing matter at hand. “How have you _not_ burnt your tongue off?”

“Oh. Uh,” Cas nods stiffly. “I’m… very heat-resistant.”

“Uh… huh.”

And that’s that. The moment is mostly chalked up as some weird shit Cas can do, like a cool party trick some dude did at some party months ago.

(And Dean _did_ google it after he came home out of pure curiosity—apparently there are more people out there who do this for the sake of not staining their teeth, or in a more logical context, people who can’t hold cups up to their lips properly for medical reasons. Dean kinda felt like a dick for acting so stupidly surprised after realizing that)

(Sure, he probably could’ve asked Cas about his exact reason for doing it, but he didn’t want to come across as an insensitive jerk after being a dick)

(Knowing what he knows now, he probably should’ve asked just to hear what Cas would say)

Few days later, Dean comes home earlier than usual. His last class for the day is cancelled for reasons he can’t remember now, and Dean’s a happy guy since that means he can show Cas how to bake peanut butter chocolate chucks cookies the Winchester way earlier than he’d promised to.

He walks into their apartment and knocks at Cas’s door. “Cas? You home?”

Dean listens for any sound that might indicate that he’s home, and he holds his breath as he waits for an answer. It’s very, very quiet.

Well, alright then. Maybe the dude’s out. About time too, since Dean’s rarely seen him interact with anyone outside of, well, Dean.

He’s about to turn around and start on his cookie dough (now that he’s thought about it too much he’s craving some) when he jumps from a loud ass _bang_ followed by a _crash_ from Cas’s room.

Dean knocks on Cas’s door. “Cas? You okay?”

There’s a shuffling sound, and Dean’s getting a bit worried now, because that wasn’t a 'I accidentally knocked something over' sound, but more like a 'I accidentally banged my head against something and possibly passed out on the floor with a concussion' sound.

“Cas,” Dean says again, and tries the door. It’s unlocked. “Cas, I’m coming in, okay?”

“ _Wait_!” comes Cas’s voice, making Dean immediately back out of the room, closing the door in the process. There was a glimpse of Cas definitely on the floor, covered in… black feathers, like a blanket. And also possibly naked.

Awkward.

“Uh. Sorry, man.”

“It’s fine,” says Cas from the other side of the door, sounding slightly miffed. “Did you need something?”

“Um.” Imagination runs wild, and Dean can feel himself flushing to his hairline. “Nothing, nope, just, uh. Figured maybe we could make cookies or something,” he says stupidly, and fuck, he feels like the stupidest person in the world right now. “Sorry,” he says again, gripping for something in the otherwise awkward as hell silence. “I just thought—I don’t know, I thought maybe you were hurt or something.”

“Dean, it’s fine,” Cas says again, and he sounds so pained that has Dean snap his mouth shut. Fuck.

“Okay,” Dean replies. “Uh, take your time with—whatever,” fuck, shut _up_ , “and uh, yeah, bye.”

There’s no response, so Dean walks away from the door, into the kitchen, and opens the fridge for the sake of doing something with his hands.

Okay. Okay, so maybe his cute roommate has a thing for feathers or something and he just walked into it by accident, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t _care_ , and whatever, that’s—that’s fine. Everyone’s got different taste in things. Dean doesn’t judge. Yeah.

He feels like the biggest pervert in the world, walking in on something like that. Stupid, fuck, he should’ve just stayed on campus or something. Why did he come back home? Fuck.

Later, Dean is purposefully staring at the sizzling chicken breast in the pan when Cas stalks into the kitchen. Cas eyes the pan with a tight expression (seriously, what’s the guy got against chicken?), then clears his throat. Dean glances over to Cas, and manages a smile. “Hey.”

“Hello.”

“Uh, I made cookies?” Dean points at the sheet of cookies on the counter. “If you want.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Cas doesn’t budge from where he is, and Dean awkwardly eyes the wall to Cas’s side. This is more awkward than the time Dean accidentally walked in on Sam that one ti—ugh, definitely did _not_ need a reminder of that.

“Listen—”

“Dean, I—”

They stare at each other, and Dean puts his hands up. “Go ahead.”

Cas clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides. “Did you see?”

Dean almost has half a heart to go _see what?_ just to spare him all the trouble, but he’s really not sure if a blind eye is what Cas needs, or something else. Maybe nobody’s told him that there’s nothing wrong with feather kink, hey.

“Kinda hard to miss,” is what Dean goes for, in the end.

He’s still not really sure if what he did is right, since Cas tenses up in all kinds of way, and goes off. “I know it must be hard for you to understand, and I don’t blame you for it, and if you want me to leave, I will. I just ask you to not—”

“Whoa, Cas, wait,” Dean squeaks, and clears his throat. “Listen, I won’t tell anybody or anything, alright? So don’t sweat over it. I really am sorry for uh, intruding like that,” he says. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Cas blinks, like this is the last thing he expected to hear. He’s still for a while, maybe in shock or something, and takes a deep breath after seemingly working things out in his head.

“You mean it?” he asks.

Dean’s reply is instantaneous. “Yeah, man, ‘course. I should’ve known better—I mean, I’m just glad you’re not hurt—”

“So you won’t speak about it?”

He almost wants to ask what Cas exactly takes him for—some skeevy roommate that goes around telling everyone about private things like that—but bites his tongue. Dude’s probably still embarrassed that Dean walked in on him like that, and he supposes it’s not exactly something you’d share to the rest of the class, no matter how much you actually trust them as a person. Well, it’s none of Dean’s business, anyway.

“No, I won’t,” Dean replies firmly, and Cas visibly relaxes.

“And you…” Cas hesitates. “You don’t mind living with me?”

“What? No. Cas, that’s—”

Dean bites his tongue again, and fixes his eyes back onto his meal, poking at it with the flipper. Should he say something else? It feels like he should, but he doesn’t want to overstep his boundaries, _but_ he doesn’t want Cas to think he’s being judged for stuff like that. Not like it’s anything _bad_ , and besides, he’s living in a place where he’s paying honest rent for. It’s not like he should be condemned for things like that under his own roof. And from the sounds of it, it sounds like he’s got some bad experiences from talking about it or something, the way he keeps going on about Dean wanting him to leave.

After a minute of conflict, he goes for it. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Dean rubs the back of his neck. God, this is so awkward, but he needs to power this through. “Sure I’ll admit that it’s not my thing personally, but y’know. Everyone’s different in their own ways, y’know? I don’t judge.”

It seems like Dean’s done the right thing for once during this conversation, with the way Cas’s eyes widen.

“I see,” he says slowly, and stares as Dean unloads his chicken onto a plate.

“Besides, y’know, feathers aren’t even that weird in this day and age,” Dean continues, and what the fuck, why hasn’t he shut up yet. “So it’s not really a big deal. I mean, I’ve heard of way kinkier things than that, y’know. Y’know?” Holy fuck, Dean, _shut_ the _fuck_ up.

Cas frowns, and yeah, now Dean’s _definitely_ coming off as the skeevy roommate and it’s all gone to shit.

“Kinkier,” Cas repeats very seriously, and oh my god, why does he have to do that, that—that _thing_ where he repeats it all puzzled like Dean just hasn’t said the most awkward thing in the world.

Dean smiles and it hurts his face, and he shrugs with one of his shoulders, like ‘eh, whatcha gonna do’. Cas is still frowning and looking up and down at Dean now, like trying to figure out if he’s got fetishes Cas doesn’t know about, and is about to start up a Sharing is Caring chat or something now that they’ve apparently come to this point in their relationship.

“Um, okay, I’m gonna, just, yeah, go,” Dean says, and holds up his dinner like a shield between them as he walks out of the kitchen before Cas stops him again.

“Wait,” Cas says quickly, and Dean wants to just bury himself into the concrete wall because why won’t he just let him off the hook? “Um.”

Dean braces himself. “What?”

“If you’re okay with this,” Cas starts with hesitation, and for a split, crazy panic-induced second, Dean thinks he’s going to ask him to join him next time or something, “is it alright with you if I let them out in the living room sometimes?”

His brain short-circuits. Dean blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not sure what the human custom is, and honestly, I’m not really sure if there even is one when it comes to my case,” Cas confesses, and Dean is ten degrees of confused now, “and they’re usually fine hidden and I should practice hiding them, but I admit that I’m not used to having to. Hide them, I mean.” Cas pauses, and gauges for Dean’s reaction, which is none. Because Dean doesn’t even know what he’s reacting to, at this point. Hide what, the feathers? He’s not really sure he wants to think of any other options with this speech happening. “And like you say, they can become… kinky if I don’t stretch them once in a while. My room is too small for them.”

Too small? “Stretch what?” he asks only for the sake of saying something at this point, though he regrets the words the instant they’re out.

“My wings,” Cas frowns. “That… _is_ what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Dean wants to somehow turn away from all this like the guys walking away without looking back at explosions, because this entire conversation has been a complete disaster and he never wants to acknowledge that it existed in the first place. Sure, Cas’s always sounded sort of formal even though his actual words are pretty frank, but he didn’t expect him to be all hoity toity about it calling it ‘stretching his wings’ and shit, what the fuck.

But he also states it so directly that Dean doesn’t even think to refute. Instead, he says, “Yeah, sure, just do it when I’m not around, alright?” and instantly regrets it by instinct when Cas’s face falls in this really dramatic way, like Dean just told him he’s going to kill his firstborn. But logic kicks in, and he’s not about to apologize for not wanting to be around when his roommate’s doing his kinky shit. Yeah.

He’s still not really sure what’s up with the whole dejected puppy look Cas is wearing, but he’s not going to back down on this since he’s gotta have a line he can’t cross, and this has to be it. It’s enough that the image of Cas’s bare back is now seared into the back of his retinas for the rest of his life, and honestly, if Dean comes back home one day to find Cas in the living room like, uh… Yeah, that’s just weird.

Anyway, he’s just glad they got that talk over with. “Alright, good talk,” Dean says, and by knee-jerk instinct he pats Cas on the arm, and definitely doesn’t run to his room.

* * *

Dean doesn’t know what to think.

He’s not really sure what he’s even looking at, here.

Because, look, okay, _maybe_ he’s been avoiding the house a little more often these days, if only to give his new roommate and his uh, hobby a little more privacy. But he can’t live in the library until it closes at three in the morning every day for the rest of his college life, and it was so damn _hot_ today despite being September that he just really, _really_ wanted a shower. And, to his relief, Cas hears the door opening as loudly as Dean could have possibly made it.

“Hello, Dean,” calls Cas from the living room while Dean takes his shoes off.

“Hey, Cas. Eat dinner yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Cool,” Dean says, and since he doesn’t hear rushed shuffling of any kind, so he figures it must be safe to walk into the living room. “I was thinking stir… fry…”

The words die on his lips as he finds Cas lying on his stomach on the couch, his head propped up with a hand under his chin and a frown settled between his brows as he mutters his readings under his breath. He’s not wearing a shirt.

There are wings sprouting out of his back.

Dean stares. And stares. He doesn’t see any strings or anything that somehow attach the black feathery wings to Cas’s bare shoulder blades. They actually look like they’re… _melded_ onto him. There’s—no end to his wings as a separate thing. They just. Stop being his wings and starts being his back.

But. Uh. That’s impossible. Obviously.

He's about to ask, like, 'hey, what's up with the cool get-up?' when Cas yawns then, startling Dean, and he arches his back and stretches his arms and legs backwards like he’s unintentionally planking, all the while one of his wings, the right one, it—it _shoots to the side_ like it’s _also_ stretching. Dean keeps staring, but he doesn’t see how Cas would even be moving the left one all twitchy like that while doing—all _that_ with the rest of his limbs.

Cas rolls his left shoulder and cranes his neck, and starts when he sees Dean.

The feathers on his wings _puff up_.

Then they _flatten back down_.

 _How_.

Cas looks guilty, and his wings—they—shuffle around, almost like they’re restless, as he sits up. “I thought you went to your room,” he says, and his wings flutter behind him. Dean is still staring. There’s a weird buzzing in his ear. Dean might actually pass out.

Not just because Cas has no shirt on.

“Dean?”

“Wha.”

“Are you… I know you said not to take them out when you’re here, but I just…” Cas’s wings visibly huddle tighter behind him. “I thought you went back to your room,” he repeats.

Is he fucking with him? It’s not April, so it can’t be April Fool’s day. Halloween’s not for another month. Cosplay? Is this cosplay?

Wings. Cas said he had wings.

No.

Wait.

Wait. Wait, no. No way.

No.

 _No_. What?

Jesus fucking Christ, he literally told him to his face and Dean thought—

He’s such an—

Okay, but who would actually think—

But that’s—

What the _fuck_.

Cas is frowning at him now, confusion slowly ebbing away to be replaced by a certain type of inquisition. “Dean?”

What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck—

“When we talked before, when I asked you if you saw,” Cas says slowly, carefully, his voice firmer with each word, “we _were_ talking about my wings, right?”

Dean rips his eyes away from his wings to dart one wide-eyed panicked look at Cas, and all the guilt crumbles out of Cas’s face. “ _Dean_ , you _said_ —”

“Dude, in _what_ honest to _god_ world would I have guessed that _this_ —” Dean flails towards Cas’s direction, “—is what you meant? I thought you were talking in some weird metaphor—”

“ _Why_ would I—”

Cas’s face goes through a roulette of emotions that briefly settles on what feels like anger, then into a scowl. His wings are tightly wound against him as are his shoulders, but he doesn’t say anything else. His wings flutter restlessly once in a while in the otherwise silence. He’s a little scary like this.

The wings are black, by the way, iridescent black like a crow or, or oil? Dean’s not sure how to describe them. Big, too, peeking out over Cas’s head. He can see why Cas wanted the living room to stretch them out, and he sort of wants to know how big they are when they’re fully open.

Dean realizes he’s staring, so he rips his eyes away to stare at something less interesting than Cas fiddling with his textbook. Anywhere that’s not Cas or those wings sprouting out of his back or his very naked chest staring back at him.

So. What is his roommate, exactly? Is Cas part of x-men? Or, or—what else can have wings? Birds? Angels? Is Cas an angel? A bird? A plane? No, it’s Superman?

God. Not the time for that.

Cas is flexing his shoulders when Dean looks back at him, the wings gone. Wait, what just happened? He looks behind Cas to see if he’s been fucking with him after all, but there are no fake set of wings lying on the floor, nor are there any feathers poking out from under the couch.

Well. There _is_ one black feather neatly lying on the couch, but otherwise, nothing.

“Uh.” Dean rubs his forehead. Nothing in his life has ever prepared him for this. “What happened to your…”

“I put them back in.”

“Oh, you can…” Dean clears his throat. “That’s pretty cool. I mean, I guess that makes sense since I never really _saw_ them saw them until now. But, yeah.” Shut up, shut _up_. Stop freaking out. “So. Uh.”

Cas stares at him, completely blank. “So.”

“Are you… I mean.” Dean licks his lips. He hopes it’s not too out of line to ask, because c’mon, he’s gotta have _some_ rights to know what he’s living with here, right? “What are you, exactly?”

“I’m a phoenix harpy-human,” Cas replies, and wow, okay, that’s a mouthful. Still completely unbelievable that this is happening, but a mouthful.

“Harpy, like Greek mythos harpy?” Dean blinks. “Harpies are real?”

Cas looks down at himself, then back up. “Yes.”

“What’s the deal with the whole phoenix and harpy crap? Are you a phoenix or a harpy or what?”

Cas frowns. “I’m part phoenix harpy.”

Dean repeats this in his head, but nope, he still literally didn’t answer anything. “So—what, you can,” he wiggles his fingers in front of his mouth, “breathe out fire or something?”

“Oh. Um. No. I’m not actually phoenix. We’re just… called that since we’re more receptive to heat than other harpies and usually live in deserts.”

“Oh. Holy crap, so you’re actually from the Saharas or something?”

“Arizona, actually. You knew that.”

“Oh. I figured maybe you said that ‘cause… I mean, no offense! Just—”

“None taken. I have kin there, or so I’m told.”

“Kin,” Dean echoes. “Huh. So you’re not… by yourself, sort of deal. So wait, do your parents know about this? Are your parents also harpies?”

“Yes and no,” Cas replies patiently. “My mother is harpy. My father is human.”

“Oh. Uhh.” What does Dean even say at this point. “Okay.”

Dean doesn’t remember the next few minutes too well as it goes by a blur—he says something about having a good night, and of _course_ he’s completely fine Cas, why wouldn’t he be, and the next thing he knows, he’s in his room closing the door behind him.

Just call him Dean 'Smooth' Winchester.

There’s a small sigh outside his door, and Dean tenses immediately. It was too much of a shock for him to properly think it through, but what if—what if Cas has a taste for human meat, or something? Or, or try to _kill_ him because this is top secret that can’t be leaked because it’ll put the rest of Cas’s family in danger? It’s not like Cas knows Dean that well—they’ve known each other during the last half of the summer and the first few weeks of school, at most.

He needs a plan to protect himself. But what if Cas tries to attack him during the night, when Dean’s the most vulnerable?

God, what does he _do_?

* * *

Dean doesn’t get a wink of sleep.

He rolls over in his bed, and checks his phone. 3:34AM. He rolls it in his hand, the weight of it comforting and _real_. He’s definitely not dreaming.

God. _Fuck_.

Dean can’t believe he’s been such a dumb shit about it. In retrospect, of _course_ Cas isn’t human. Dude acts like grocery stores are the best thing to have happened since the dawn of time, he can’t talk to customer services for shit, he loves weird soap operas for god’s sake, and… and…

He’s… Cas.

The first time he came across the phrase ‘bisexual’ in high school, there was a gradual shift in his life as he realized that hey, he’s into people who aren’t girls, too. Maybe it’s not the same thing, but suddenly he was forced to acknowledge that he’s different from people around him. That everyone lives with the same set of rules except for him.

He remembers the choking feeling of isolation. The pressure to be extra careful, from the way he talked, to his choice of words, to how he completely refrained from physical contact with people who weren’t girls throughout the rest of high school, just in case people found out one day and the false accusations landed at him.

The suffocating things he’s had to do just because he wanted to exist in the same place as everyone else.

Because god, that’s the catch, isn’t it? The last few months he’s known him, Cas hasn’t done anything _to_ him. He was just fumbling through life in what must’ve been this weird foreign environment, and he must’ve…

God, he must’ve felt so lonely here without anyone else knowing about him.

He also knows just how freeing it is to have that one person to support him, how easier it feels just to remember that someone out there knows. Just one person to watch your back, no matter what. Even now, even though he’s escaped to the most liberal university he could’ve applied to, no matter how accepting they supposedly are, he knows he couldn’t have made it all in one piece if he didn’t have Sam and his mom’s support at the time.

He rolls his phone in his hand again. He’s no Sam. He’s not his mom, and he _definitely_ isn’t Cas’s immediate family. But…

He thinks about how Cas sighed. He thinks about the way his wings puffed up, the way Cas’s face fell when Dean told him not to show his wings when he was around.

He didn’t _know_. If he had, fuck, he would’ve handled that so much better.

Well.

He _does_ know now. Doesn’t he?

Dean gets out of his bed.

He sees the light pouring out from the edges of Cas’s door, and knocks firmly. There’s silence from the other side of the door, but it’s so pointed that Dean can physically feel Cas staring at the door in disbelief. He holds his breath, and he doesn’t even know what he’s going to say, fuck, but… But…

He can’t leave things like this.

The door opens so carefully, Dean swallows a pang of guilt as Cas comes to view, barefoot and in his pajamas. “Yes?” he says, his expression guarded.

“Hey,” Dean starts, because he’s gotta start somewhere. Cas is still holding onto the door like a wall between himself and Dean, and given the way Dean acted when he actually found out, he doesn’t blame him. “Can we… Can we talk? I promise it’s nothing bad,” he adds quickly.

Cas’s other hand that isn’t holding the door tightly, twitches slightly. He looks at Dean like he’s trying to bore a hole into his forehead with his stare alone, and he steps out from behind the door. The door clicks shut gently, and Castiel stands there in front of Dean, his arms dangling by his sides.

Dean rubs the back of his neck. This is so beyond his capabilities. But Cas stares at him like Dean's about to accuse him of something he’s not even guilty for, and god, this is still Cas. Nothing’s changed, except maybe now Dean got the light shone on something about Cas that's always been there this whole time.

“So, um.” Dean clears his throat. “I didn’t handle that very well, huh?”

He tries out a laugh, but it comes out as a strangled sound instead, and Cas just looks sadder than before. Fuck.

If he had to hide who he was from the rest of the world just to survive, what would he want to hear?

What would’ve helped him?

“Cas, I… I’m sorry,” Dean says, and he wants to put more strength behind his words, but somehow they come out hushed. “For acting the way I did.”

Cas blinks, and his carefully guarded expression softens. “Dean, that’s not your fault.”

“I still…” Dean’s voice shakes slightly. “I’m not gonna lie, I still need some time to process all this, but that’s on me, not you.”

Cas frowns, like he doesn’t understand what he’s hearing.

“You’re still my friend. You know that, right? This doesn’t—change anything.” Dean swallows. “You’re still you.”

Cas nods mutely, and his fingers twitch again. He searches the floor for something, Dean doesn’t know what, but when he looks up to meet Dean’s eyes, they’re cautious, open, hopeful. “I wanted to tell you.”

Dean blinks. “Huh?”

“Out of everyone I’ve met, you…” Cas’s mouth hangs open slightly, and they search for the right words. “I wanted you to know, but I was never going to act out on it. I was scared that you’d…”

Dean doesn’t know why he does it. Just that he gets it, he really  _does_ , and Cas looks so—far away, that Dean just reaches out, and grabs his hands, and squeezes. Cas’s eyes fly to Dean, and Dean tries on a reassuring smile. Hey, he ain’t going nowhere just yet.

The corner of Cas’s lips twitch up.

“In any case, I’m glad you found out,” Cas continues quietly.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Me, too. And you know, now that I actually know what you mean, you can have your wings out any time. Seriously.”

Cas’s eyes are warm when he smiles back at him. “Thank you, Dean.”

Dean nods.

They stand in their dark hallway, only illuminated by the light from Cas’s room, and they smile at each other while holding hands like idiots. Dean gently lets his hands go, and clenches his fists against the warmth from Cas’s hands that quickly escape his palms. He clears his throat, and pats him on his shoulder. “Dude, it’s like, four. Go to bed.”

Cas’s smile fully reaches his eyes now. “Good night, Dean.”

“Night, Cas.”

Cas’s door clicks shut, but the sound doesn’t grate at Dean’s nerves. Dean sinks into his own bed, and this time, he has no problem slipping into sleep.

 

(The next morning, Cas asks him what Dean _thought_ he meant when he said he wants to stretch his wings out, and Dean runs away from _that_ conversation like the coward he is.

God, he's such an _idiot_ sometimes.)


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a beautiful campus. There are trees everywhere and greens stretched out as far as one’s eyes can see with paths that winds around them. Birds sing under the bright summer sunlight.

Castiel would trade it all to be back home.

The campus tour guide says something about the particular building they’re staring at and explains the history behind it. Castiel is interested in a detached sort of way, but most of the guide’s words flow over him.

This is his reality now. This is his home starting from now on, the starting point of his second life where he has to start all over again. A group of humans walk by while they laugh about something. The tour group moves along to the next building and the guide shoots into an explanation again.

Some of the people in the tour group must be parents with their children who are soon to attend this institution. The people who look more Castiel’s age flip over their pamphlets while they look around their surroundings, excitement written on their faces as they dream about the life they’ll have here. The tour guide says something that Castiel can’t understand entirely but the rest of the group laughs. In a way, it’s almost bitterness that makes him laugh along—he didn’t fit in at home either, but at least he knew what was going on from the years of being there.

He stares down at the concrete ground for the rest of the tour.

This is the start of the rest of his life.

* * *

“How was it?” Anna asks.

Absolutely terrifying. “It was fine.”

“And? Have you found a place to live yet?”

No. “I’m still looking.”

There’s a pause at the other side of the phone. “And how are you?”

Homesick. “I’m fine.”

“Castiel,” Anna warns.

“How did you do this?” he asks instead. “I don’t… I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know their ways. Sometimes I think we’re not even speaking the same language.”

“I know,” Anna says quietly and it’s somehow relieving to hear that he isn’t the only one. “I get it. It’s scary. Trust me, I get it. But hey,” she says brightly, “if I can do it, then so can you. I’m here for you. Okay?”

Castiel squeezes the phone in his hand. “Alright.”

“Do you want me to help you look for a place?”

Castiel glances at the notebook he has open beside him. “I have a few places to go look at already. But… thank you, Anna.”

“No problem. If you need anything, whatever it might be, let me know,” she says. “Okay?”

Castiel nods even though she can’t see him doing it. “Okay,” he replies quietly.

The phone clicks off and Castiel is left with silence in his temporary motel room that their mother’s lent out for him until he could find a proper place to live. He still has the entire summer to look but he’s almost tempted to just say that he couldn’t find a place so could he please spend another year back home until the new semester starts?

He misses his family. He misses his friends. He misses home.

It’s cruel. It’s unfair that he has to unlearn everything he’s had to until now just to adapt a wholly different way of living. Because he’s something he didn’t choose to be.

Castiel closes his eyes and swallows down the feeling. It doesn’t matter. That’s all in the past, it’s already all happened, and right now there’s nothing immediate he can do to reverse the clan’s decision to ‘immigrate’ him into the human world and go back home. He’s here now, and there’s nothing left to do but to go forward.

And right now, he needs to focus on finding a place to live.

* * *

By the end of the week, Castiel is exhausted. He’s gone through countless advertisements for a room and none of them have been satisfactory so far. Some don’t meet the monetary limitations that the clan has set for him, some don’t feel right, some are just… too horrible to put to words.

He doesn’t bother Anna with it. He knows she’s busy with her human job and her human life that she’s constructed ever since she chose to leave on her own terms a few years ago.

He has one more place to look at for today. He has no real hope for it after how his search has been going so far, but he still gets through the confusing bus transportation system (it would be so much easier to just _fly_ ) and somehow ends up in front of the front door of an apartment unit. He knocks and waits.

A man similar to his age opens the door. “Hey,” the man says with a smile. “Are you here to look at the room?”

“Yes.” Castiel extends a hand like he’s seen other landlords do upon meeting. “I’m Castiel.”

The man blinks. Although Castiel is used to that reaction when introducing himself by now, he’s not used to how the man doesn’t comment on his name or poke fun at him otherwise. “Nice to meet you, Castiel. I’m Dean.”

It’s a promising start.

After Dean takes his hand and shakes it firmly, he ushers him inside. It’s a nice clean place—there’s a small kitchen which is divided from the living room by a wall, and a balcony. There’s what can be called a hallway down the living room and two rooms facing each other at the end of the hallway.

The room up for lease is big enough—not enough for his full wingspan that he’s planning on letting out eventually once he has the privacy of his own space, but enough that he’ll at least be able to stretch out the joints from time to time. It’s definitely a big improvement from the rooms he’s seen so far, but settling for this room would really mean that he’s no longer…

Dean coughs beside him. Castiel rips his attention from the room.

“Hot today, huh?” Dean says conversationally. “Do you want some water or anything to drink?”

The weather has been perfect for Castiel but he appreciates the offer. “I’m alright, but thank you.”

“I swear it’s not usually this hot in here,” Dean says. “I haven’t been out all day but it must be really hot out today.”

Castiel tries not to feel guilty about Dean’s momentary discomfort from his naturally higher body temperature and steps away from him. “How far is this place from campus?”

Dean shrugs. “About half an hour on foot on a good day. If the bus decides to show up at the stop in front of the apartment, it’s about ten minutes.”

“The public transport system is an abomination,” Castiel replies without taking his eyes off the room’s window looking out the field. Somewhere beyond there is where he used to live with his family.

Dean lets out a small chuckle that has Castiel look back at him. “I hear you. What’re you studying?”

“Anthropology,” Castiel says. “Are you the landlord?”

“What? Uh, no. I also live here. I’m the one who posted the ad.” Dean points at the other room facing the one they’re currently  in. He eyes Castiel and licks his lips. “Is that a… problem?”

“No,” Castiel says and looks back at the room. Truthfully, he’s not sure about the roommate situation. He’s never had to live with anyone but his family before let alone a stranger. He’s never had to live without his family before.

He’s terrified either way.

Once again Castiel feels… upset. He didn’t choose to come here. He didn’t choose to stand in this unfamiliar apartment with a stranger who knows nothing about him, and he just wants to go back home.

He can’t go back home. Not anymore.

There’s a tap against his shoulder. “Hey.”

Castiel blinks and refocuses his sight to find Dean worryingly looking at him. The man has green eyes, just like the forest Castiel saw on his way to this city. Lush and full of life.

“You alright?” Dean continues, his hand slipping away from his shoulder now.

“I… Yes,” Castiel lies. “I’m fine.”

“Did you eat anything today?” Dean asks.

This seems out of nowhere, but now that he mentions it, Castiel hasn’t. “No.”

“Look, I was about to have lunch anyway,” Dean says. “Why don’t you join me? I swear it’s not me trying to rope you in or anything,” he adds with a slight chuckle.

Castiel finds this strange. Though he might be new to this community, even he knows this isn’t something that happens normally. “Are you sure?”

Dean shrugs. “It’d be nice to have company. I threw some pork in a crock pot yesterday so it should be ready now. D’you like pulled pork?”

Castiel doesn’t know what a ‘crock pot’ is but he does know pork. His stomach growls and he thinks back to the empty motel room. “Yes.”

“Cool.”

Dean makes Castiel sit down with a cold glass of water to sip on while he readies the sandwiches in the kitchen. Castiel watches as the condensation forms on the outside of the glass. Dean has the windows open and Castiel can hear the trees rustling under the apartment in the wind. It’s a quiet mid-afternoon and something smells savoury and delicious as sounds of plates clank out of the kitchen.

Dean sets down a bun with some sort of shredded pork that’s been seasoned with red sauce and topped with cheese. “Dig in while it’s hot,” he says.

Something lurches in his chest when Castiel takes a bite. He hasn’t had a meal cooked by someone else in a while. Ever since he left home.

“How is it?” Dean asks, wiping some sauce off his lips. “I tried a new recipe for this one and I think it turned out pretty good, right?”

It’s like an unknown wound closing up somewhere, and for some reason, Castiel wants to cry.

“It’s very good,” Castiel says through his mouth full of food, swallowing down the bite along with the lump that’s formed in his chest. “I’d like to speak with your landlord once we’re done with lunch, if that’s alright with you.”

Dean chews with his eyebrows raised. He nods.

For the first time since he’s arrived here, Castiel smiles.

* * *

Sometime later in the future, Castiel comes home one night and smells a very familiar smell. He slings his backpack off his shoulders and walks to the kitchen to find Dean nibbling on a piece of pulled pork out of his crock pot.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says with a big beautiful grin. “What took you so long?”

“I had an assignment due tonight. Is this dinner?”

“Yup. I think it’s done.” Dean licks some sauce off his fingers. “Can you grab the cheese?”

Dean tells him about his day while they eat on the couch with a rerun of _Wheel of Fortune_ on TV. The sauce is messy; it dribbles everywhere and there are more than one account of running for the toilet paper to use as napkins. The sandwich just as delicious as the day they met, though it’s been long enough that Castiel doesn’t remember how it tasted before.

Dean is trying very hard to guess the words before the contestants on TV when Castiel notices a patch of sauce Dean’s missed to wipe. Castiel doesn’t think twice before he reaches over and wipes it away from the corner of Dean’s mouth, and Dean freezes in midst of guessing the phrase.

“Uh,” Dean says.

“There was sauce,” Castiel reasons calmly. He’s not sure why—it’s not any different than any other evenings they’ve spent together, yet his heart beats so fast now as he watches Dean’s face flush a deep bright red.

“Right,” Dean replies slowly. “Warn a guy next time.”

Castiel nods and rubs the residue between his fingers.

Castiel volunteers to do the dishes since Dean cooked them dinner and the rest of the evening passes quietly. He makes both of them a cup of hot chocolate and Dean sips at it while he complains about his micro-bio workload.

These are things that are familiar to Castiel now: Dean’s home-cooked meals, shared cups of hot chocolate, and many other wonderful things. Anna is proud of how far he’s come and he is too, in a way. He nods along to Dean’s complaint and smiles. One day for sure, Castiel will repay Dean for all he’s done and all of his incredible ways to make Castiel feel like he belongs more than he’s felt anywhere else.

For now, Castiel’s found home here.


End file.
